Invitation to GOP executive Committee meeting on June 25 / Yesterday An Open Letter

Yesterday June 25, 2007, I would invite my little brother Terry
Lee out to lunch with the primary intent to convince him to once
again join me on my proposed trek on the Re-union March Across Dixie
and to complete the March Across Virginia to the White House. I
knew that it was going to be a hard sell because Terry Lee is convinced
that we did it , it is history, and that we should be playing the
documentary of the journey all across America, something that we
have received little support or interest to do. Before we could
sit down at the table provided to us by the hostess, a young white
lady approached our table and exclaimed to me that she noticed the
Confederate Flag insignia on the shirt that I was wearing and that
every time she saw it , that she was offended. The shirt that I
was wearing just happened to be the historic Dixie Outfitters shirt
that on the back bore the image of myself proclaiming me to be a
Modern Day Southern Heritage Hero. I asked her where she was from
? With her Northern dialect, she proclaimed that she was from Asheville.
I then told her of the time that the Union soldiers had come to
Asheville, met with the Mayor and assured him that if he was provided
with provisions for his men that he would not burn or sack the city.
He would leave, and head out for Morganton, N.C., burn it, while
some of his men would double back ; they would ransack Asheville;
people would later tell that it looked like a snow storm in Asheville
from all the bedding that they stripped in search for hidden silver
and other valuables as they looted the town. I then turned and asked
her to read the back of my shirt, she glanced at it quickly in a
pretense that she had read it; I then insisted that she read it
; she did , thank Terry Lee and I for our time , and walked away
obviously disappointed in her mission. She had gotten more than
she had bargained for, and it would have been worse had I let Terry
Lee loose on her like he wanted to. Terry Lee and I both knew that
this young lady was no Southern woman, and certainly not from Asheville,
even though she may live here now, and we held much conversation
about those who like her that now inhabitant our homeland and blamed
Black folks for the kind of rhetoric that she espoused.

Later on that evening, at the invitation of the Chairman of the
Buncombe County Republican Party, I would attend the Buncombe County
Republican Party Executive Committee meeting. I would be greeted
very warmly by those in attendance. The Chairman would ask one of
the Precinct Chairs , a White man from the most exclusive part of
the city and county to deliver the invocation. In his prayers he
began to thank God for the fact that because of the great Abraham
Lincoln that we were all not now slaves, and the pride that we should
all have for being in the party of Lincoln and Regan. When he finish
with that diatribe, I couldn't help but to open that same big mouth
of mine that had already gotten me in trouble for chiding a white
man at a meeting in my home town for this kind of rhetoric. Just
as the meeting was being called to a close, I blasted all those
present for proclaiming to seek Black folks in the Republican Party
while having the extreme need to be educated towards those ends
, and furthermore that they needed an education committee . Before
I could sit down, I was nominated and approved to chair that kind
of committee, with several folks volunteering to sit on it.

I was stopped at the door by several people who wanted to know more
about my concerns. I told them that this Republican party was not
the Radical Republican Party of Lincoln, and that I resented the
continued reference that it was, especially by Southerners. I went
on to tell them that when I had run for Mayor, one of my dearest
and most trusted friends, an 82 year old Black man who was now deceased,
and who just happened to be a Real Son through his kinship with
the late Senator Sam Irving , had told me that he could not vote
for me because I was a Republican . I had asked him why ? He told
me that his dad like a lot of dads of that time told him never to
vote for a Republican because it was them who had stirred up trouble
between Southern Blacks and Southern Whites ; influencing them with
liquor , lies and women, and when this did not work , they used
force to make them vote for the Republican Party ; and when they
had clean the South dry; with the deal they made in the Rutherford
B.Hayes election , they pulled out of the South and left Black folks
behind to face all the hostilities of a angry White populous. I
told them that while many Black folks did not fully understand as
Mr.. Fred Harper had , too many Yankees come here to the South believing
in the Northern rhetoric that they teach in the public schools here
and across this nation about Lincoln as a hero to Black folks with
the assumption that they believe it. However, this is not what troubles
me the most. What is troubling to me is that Southern White people
have become far too comfortable in their relationships with these
kinds of men who now habitat our Southland , or just too afraid
to stand up and call them out for what they say, and when a Black
man like me does , it appears that I have forgotten my place , and
the White men who set on the Board of Directors of organizations
like the NAACP accomplish their mission just like they did during
so call Reconstruction of using the Jesse Jackson's and Julian Bonds
as the mouth piece of unsuspecting loyal Black folks who have to
pay the cost for their actions that they claim are to help us. Even
more troubling to me is that the very same people who call me names
like money grubber when I try to raise funds just to help my Southland,
and especially my Southern babies who stay in trouble for their
honorable stands, are the very same people when you take a look
that feel their coffers using the Flag as a means to those ends.

I would like to invite you to attend the Buncombe County Executive
Committee meeting on Monday June 25th at 6:00 at Ryans Steak House
on Patton Avenue. We will be discussing the recent move by City
Council to return to partisan elections and will be considering
the petition to hold a referendum on the issue. Some of the executive
committee members asked me to extend a formal invitation to you
to participate in our discussion and this e-mail will serve as
that formal invitation.